Directed Evolution Corp

Do they only effect the corps and factions that you're currently liked/disliked by or say I had trained connections to 5 and then began training up diplomacy which then caused a faction that disliked me to like me.

Would they then be effected by connections? Or say Caldari like me but I start killing them which causes them to dislike me, are they now effected by displomacy? These 2 skills are so confusing.

Ex Vitro

It's based on your unmodified standing. So if they dislike you then diplomacy is applied. If the like you then connections is applied.

This can lead to some strangeness. For example I have diplomacy 5 but connections 4. My Minmatar standings are -0.68 before skills and my Amarr standing is 0.02 or something. This means that once the skills are applied my effective Minmatar standing is higher than my effective Amarr standing because the extra level of diplomacy pushes my Minmatar standings up more.

If unmodified standing is below 0, only Diplomacy affects that standing.If unmodified standing is above 0, only Connections affects that standing.If unmodified standing is exactly 0, neither of them affects that standing. (In that case you can just do single mission to get unmodified standing a bit over 0 and Connections will then affect it.)

Game Master Retirement Home

Good information here already for you. It is also worth adding that if you have Diplomacy trained high but Connections at a low level or not trained at all; this can lead to you losing access to certain agents temporarily as you edge across the 0 standing threshold, if you had a minor negative standing before. Only thing to do is to work for lower level agents until get high enough standings again or train up Connections.

Good information here already for you. It is also worth adding that if you have Diplomacy trained high but Connections at a low level or not trained at all; this can lead to you losing access to certain agents temporarily as you edge across the 0 standing threshold, if you had a minor negative standing before. Only thing to do is to work for lower level agents until get high enough standings again or train up Connections.

This can only happen with level 2 agents. You can always work for level 1 agents regardless of your standings. Level 3+ agents require standings higher than the ~2.0 that can be achieved with Diplomacy 5.

All level 2 agents agents require a standing of 1.0. The scenario outlined by GM Spiral is only possible for players who have Diplomacy trained to level 3 or higher and Connections at less than 3. If you have Connections trained to level 3 or higher, then you will never lose access to an agent because of a standings increase.

Another alternative to training Connections would be failing/declining missions with a level 1 agent to keep Faction or Corp standings slightly negative while building Agent standings with a level 2 agent that is accessible via Diplomacy. Once an Agent's standings reach 1.0, increases in Faction or Corp standings will no longer remove access to that agent. Because level 1 missions give such small standings increases and corp/faction standings increases are much smaller than agent standing increases, working for a level 1 agent to build corp or faction standing to 1.0 requires a lot more effort than building a Level 2 Agent's standings to 1.0 and recovering corp and faction standings latter using level 2 agents. Of course, training Connections to level 3 is even easier.